Fate's Cradle
by Penelope Wendy Bing
Summary: Everyone in all of Panem watches the Hunger Games. But there is another viewer, silent and unknown. The Reaping ball.


A/N-Oneshot. And I don't own The Hunger Games. I'm sure you're all crushed.

There is so much death. So much. And while it may be a small number, when you really think about it, twenty-three is a tragedy. Twenty-three a year is an abomination.

Yet the Capitol continues to feed children to their appetite for entertainment. There have been so many lives lost, so many mothers shattered, so many fathers who can't look anyone in the eye any more. And the death toll keeps rising. Every year the Capitol murders more, and more. Yes, the Capitol has committed many atrocities. But something else has shattered just as many lives.

The Reaping ball.

This is the conduit, that fragile little glass sphere that is seen fit to hold life and death. The Reaping ball holds so many fates. The hopes of every child in the Districts lie in their Reaping ball. And every year the Reaping ball turns traitor and sends two of its protégés to their bloody, brutal deaths.

There is so much power in that moment. When a name is called, every emotion known to man is experienced. Some are afraid, grieved, even excited. With all that emotion, it's no surprise the Reaping ball has become...unusual.

This executioner has a mind. Not in the way we humans understand, but in a strange, subtle way. How could it not gain its own type of emotions and ideas with everything that has been poured into it for seventy-three years?

The Reaping ball is silent. It is the unknown spectator. It sits, malevolent and dangerous. It simmers in all the death and horror that comes from it. It drinks in fear and grief. And it delights in it.

Of course, how could it not? Its purpose is to send these children to their deaths. How could it ever have been born kind?

It sits on the table through speeches and more speeches. However, it is not bored. Or frightened. Or impatient. It is coiled, waiting, like a snake. This is its time. It sees light this one day each year. Its life is centered around this one day. For three hundred and sixty-four days of the year, the Reaping ball waits in a closet in the Justice Building. Then it is time.

The speeches are closing now, with a chirpy word from the escort. She's trilling on about how thrilled she is (again) although everyone knows how desperate she is for a promotion.

"Ladies first!"

That familiar battle cry. That death-lullaby. It is time for two children to die. The manicured, surgically altered hand plunges into the ball. If the humans weren't so deaf and blind to the rest of nature they would feel the pulsing excitement of the Reaping ball.

The woman calls a girl's name. She's young, but is trying to look strong. And then a commotion. Another girl is offering herself up for the first. She says her name, and all of the sister Reaping balls in Panem feel a shudder pass through them. This girl...

What will she cause? Something, clearly. The intuition of the balls is seldom wrong. Again the escort reaches into that glass ball. She calls the boy.

Each and every Reaping ball cries out in pain at that name. It magnifies the first, until a feeling of will-be rings so strong the balls feel they will shatter. Terror pulses. This feeling is clear. These children will do something terrible. The poor, mindless woman had no idea what she did when she called those names. Those names! They shall upset the balance, shall destroy everything precious. The Reaping balls; they feel this.

To the outside world, there is nothing ominous about that Reaping. Unusual perhaps, but merely this year's exciting twist. But the Reaping ball knows better.

It is put away for this year, to collect dust until the night before Reaping day. The Games come and go, and the Capitol is rocked by the sensation the Tributes have set in motion, without even really wanting to. In their closets, or shelves, or velvet-lined boxes, the Reaping balls shiver and wait. They know something is coming. And they wait.

The next Reaping. This day does not hold its usual awe and anticipation. The Reaping ball waits in fear; sureness that something awful is going to happen swims tangibly through the air.

Once again, that name zings through the heart of each ball. The second name is not truly called, but when his voice flies through the air to volunteer the Balls shriek in agony. Even some of the humans can feel something is off. They get shivers down their spine and look around subtly. The agony pulses through the balls, but even the most sensitive humans soon return to their intricate death rituals.

This time is not like the first. These Games have a purpose: kill that girl and boy, destroy the ones who bear those names. But the Reaping ball knows what the malevolent ones do not. This girl shall not be subdued. In their condemnation of her they do themselves. The balls plead with all of their might, but the deafness of the humans trumps all strength of mind. They must release her. If they do she shall sink back into nothing. But now they lend her power. The ball knows that if they continue along their current chosen path, things will end for the worst.

The ones who love the Reaping ball are shocked when she overthrows their festival of murder. It warned them, the Reaping ball laments, it warned them.

The humans struggle within their species for almost four years, before the ones who love the Reaping ball bow in submission. The balls are collected from their closets. Rough, war scared, hands take them from their shelves. The balls thrash in ways humans cannot feel; they scream their swan song of terror. Then the hands plunge the fragile balls toward the floor. The Reaping balls wail in pain and mourning as their sisters are smashed.

Finally they come to her Reaping ball. She herself holds it in her hands. The tears flow down her face for once completely unchecked. She lost both of them, one to the war. He died one of the faceless thousands, and yet she can find only enough room in her heart to mourn that one soldier. The other she lost when he was almost at her fingertips. The leader slit his throat himself. She killed the leader, but he had ensured the death of the boy. The balls had rejoiced at that, had taken the only victory they could. At least one of those names was the name of a martyr now. But still there was this girl. She held her ball, the beginning of it all, in her hands. She didn't know about the little mind that whirled in ultimate hate of her name. To her the act was symbolic.

She smashed the Reaping ball against the floor.

It has been many years since that day. The pieces were collected and put away, as a tribute to those they had killed. Tribute. No one would ever escape from that word ever again. No one would escape the memories of the Games. At least they were over physically. At least they would happen no more. Every supporter was subdued. Or dead.

But there are other lives, consciousnesses that do not live or die in the way we understand. They lurk here still, disembodied and bitterer than ever. And so the balls wait for the day when the spirit of the Reaping ball will be evoked again.

And after all, it's only a matter of time.


End file.
